Crick and Watson gave complementary advice to the aspiring scientist based on the insight that to do your best work you need to make your greatest possible effort. Crick made the positive suggestion to work on the subject which most deeply interests you, the thing about which you spontaneously gossip – Crick termed this ‘the gossip test’. Watson made the negative suggestion of avoiding topics and activities that bore you – which I have termed ‘the boredom principle’. This is good advice because science is tough and the easy things have already been done. Solving the harder problems that remain requires a lot of effort. But in modern biomedical science individual effort does not necessarily correlate with career success as measured by salary, status, job security, etc. This is because Crick and Watson are talking about revolutionary science – using Thomas Kuhn’s distinction between paradigm-shifting ‘revolutionary’ science and incremental ‘normal’ science. There are two main problems with pursuing a career in revolutionary science. The first is that revolutionary science is intrinsically riskier than normal science, the second that even revolutionary success in a scientific backwater may be less career-enhancing than mundane work in a trendy field. So, if you pick your scientific problem using the gossip test and the boredom principle, you might also be committing career suicide. This may explain why so few people follow Crick and Watson’s advice. The best hope for future biomedical science is that it will evolve towards a greater convergence between individual effort and career success.

***

The gossip test

“It came to me that I was not really telling [people] about science. I was gossiping about it. This insight was a revelation to me. I had discovered the gossip test – what you are really interested in is what you gossip about.”

“...Never do anything that bores you. My experience in science is that someone is always telling you to do things that leave you flat. Bad idea. I’m not good enough to do well something I dislike. In fact, I find it hard enough to do well something that I like.”

James Watson. Succeeding in science: some rules of thumb, 1993 [2].

The two most famous co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, Francis Crick and James Watson, gave complementary advice to the scientist who wishes to do the best work of which they are capable. The crux is that to do your best work you need to make your greatest possible effort.

Crick made the positive suggestion to work on the subject which most deeply interests you, the thing about which you spontaneously gossip – Crick termed this ‘the gossip test’; Watson made the negative suggestion of avoiding topics and activities that bore you – which I have termed ‘the boredom principle’.

This is good advice because science is tough. The easy things have already been done. Solving the harder problems that remain requires a lot of effort: either a lot of hours of investigative work, or a lot of hours of thinking – or sometimes both.

Effort must be sustained. Unless effort is fuelled by interest it will not last long enough to solve the problem, if effort is pushing against a counter-current of boredom it will be weakened. The story of the discovery of DNA’s structure is one of a massively concentrated joint effort over a relatively few years, but even over this unusually short time span there were many serious setbacks – enough to deter anyone who was too-bored or insufficiently-fascinated by the problem [3].

The effect of gossip test and boredom principle on Individual Effort can be expressed pseudo-mathematically as follows:

Let G equal the amount of time spent on gossiping about the subject that really interests you, and CP represent the time spent gossiping about the ‘current project’ on which you are supposed to be working. The percentage of maximum effort of which you are capable then equals the ratio of CP divided by G.

Individual Effort=CP/G

This is the gossip test of individual effortHowever, all science has a certain percentage of boring aspects. The boredom principle could be framed to state that the percentage time spent on activities which are boring in your current project (CP) must be subtracted from the CP effort. This percentage is the ‘boredom quotient’ – BQ. Therefore:

This equation places a bogus, but superficially-impressive, quantification onto Crick and Watson’s insight.It must acknowledged, however, that individual effort in modern biomedical science does not closely correlate with career success as measured by salary, status, job security, etc. This is because Crick and Watson are talking about revolutionary science – using Thomas Kuhn’s distinction between paradigm-shifting ‘revolutionary’ science and incremental ‘normal’ science [4]. Modern biomedical research is overwhelmingly ‘normal’ science – indeed, in organization and structure it resembles industrial R&D (research and development).

There are two main problems with pursuing a career in revolutionary science [5]. The first is that revolutionary science is intrinsically riskier than normal science because you are less likely to succeed. The second is that even success in triggering a paradigm-shifting revolution in a scientific backwater may be less career-enhancing (generating less status, salary and job security) than mundane work in a trendy (=well-funded) field.

So, if you pick your scientific problem using the gossip test and the boredom principle, you should indeed give yourself the best chance of making a personal contribution to the achievement of a major breakthrough. But the statistical probability of actually achieving a breakthrough remains small – the bigger the problem, the tougher to solve. And you might also be committing career suicide, by working in a low status, poorly funded, scientific backwater.

These aspects can be included in a new equation for measuring the probability of ‘career success – CS’. This modifies the input of Individual Effort by introducing two extra phony-variables: 1. percentage ‘probability of solution’ of the problem (PoS) and 2. ‘professional status’ of the field (PS).

Revolutionary science has a much lower PoS than normal science – leading to a lower probability of CS. And the gossip test and boredom principle will often direct individuals to work in fields where the PS is sub-optimal – also leading to a reduced CS.

So we arrive at the equation:

Percentage likelihood of career success CS=(CP/G)–BQ×PoS×PS

where CP is the time spent gossiping about current project; G is the time spent gossiping about favourite topic; BQ is percentage of boring activities in CP; PoS is probability of solution of the problem; and PS is the percentage professional status of that branch of science as reflected in the proportionate funding, journal impact factors, number of jobs compared with the trendiest area.This contrived equation yields the insight that the course of action leading to the greatest level of career success may differ substantially from the course of action leading to the highest probability of achieving a breakthrough in revolutionary science.

All of which may explain why so few people follow Crick and Watson’s advice. Implicitly the majority of scientists are not seeking their best chance of contributing to major breakthroughs in revolutionary science; but instead are seeking to optimize their career success by pursuing normal science in trendy fields. It also explains why so few people put 100% of the maximum possible level of effort into their current project – because they are working in areas which contradict the gossip test and boredom principle.

The best hope for future biomedical science is that it will evolve a convergence between Individual Effort and Career Success. Nothing can be done to alter the greater riskiness of revolutionary science compared to the predictability of incremental R&D. But maybe it is not unreasonable to hope that revolutionary science will increase its professional status [5].

How can the English-language scientific literature be made more accessible to non-native speakers? Journals should allow greater use of referenced direct quotations in ‘component-oriented’ scientific writing

In scientific writing, although clarity and precision of language are vital to effective communication, it seems undeniable that content is more important than form. Potentially valuable knowledge should not be excluded from the scientific literature merely because the researchers lack advanced language skills. Given that global scientific literature is overwhelmingly in the English-language, this presents a problem for non-native speakers. My proposal is that scientists should be permitted to construct papers using a substantial number of direct quotations from the already-published scientific literature. Quotations would need to be explicitly referenced so that the original author and publication should be given full credit for creating such a useful and valid description. At the extreme, this might result in a paper consisting mainly of a ‘mosaic’ of quotations from the already existing scientific literature, which are linked and extended by relatively few sentences comprising new data or ideas. This model bears some conceptual relationship to the recent trend in computing science for component-based or component-oriented software engineering – in which new programs are constructed by reusing programme components, which may be available in libraries. A new functionality is constructed by linking-together many pre-existing chunks of software. I suggest that journal editors should, in their instructions to authors, explicitly allow this ‘component-oriented’ method of constructing scientific articles; and carefully describe how it can be accomplished in such a way that proper referencing is enforced, and full credit is allocated to the authors of the reused linguistic components.

***

In scientific writing, although clarity and precision of language are vital to effective communication, it seems undeniable that content is more important than form. Potentially valuable knowledge should not be excluded from the scientific literature merely because the researchers lack advanced language skills.

Given that global scientific literature is overwhelmingly in the English language, this presents a problem for non-native speakers, especially for those whose language differs markedly from English in terms of its basic grammatical structure. This has become a particularly acute problem with the exponential expansion of Chinese science with an annual doubling of publications from this source [1]. Because, although many non-English speaking scientists are able to acquire sufficient competence to understand the English scientific literature; it is much more difficult – sometimes impossible – for them to learn how to write English with sufficient clarity and precision for effective scientific communication.

The traditional practice has been for scientists either to employ a translator – which is expensive and may not be possible – or to rely on line-by-line sub-editing services to be provided by the scientific journals – which is also expensive and is not possible for all journals. Furthermore, detailed sub-editing is very time-consuming if done well, and if done badly may end by significantly distorting the intended expression of ideas. And anyway, unless the submitted paper reaches a certain standard of linguistic comprehensibility, it will be rejected and will never even reach the stage of being sub-edited.

My proposal is that scientists should be permitted to construct papers using a substantial number of direct quotations from the already-published scientific literature – whenever the author judges that these quotations are a precise and clear exposition of what s/he would like to say – if only they had the linguistic competence. Naturally, such quotations would need to be explicitly referenced so that the original author and publication should be given full credit for creating such a useful and valid description.

At the extreme, this might result in a paper consisting mainly of a ‘mosaic’ of quotations from the already existing scientific literature, which are linked and extended by relatively few sentences comprising new data or ideas.

Such a result could not be regarded as an ideal for scientific writing; on the other hand it may be the best attainable result (from the perspectives of clarity and precision) which is possible within the existing constraints of the real world – and that is surely sufficient. The result should, at any rate, be better than insisting that scientists of poor linguistic competence be compelled to re-phrase and re-combine concepts which have already been well-expressed elsewhere in the scientific literature.

This model bears some conceptual relationship to the recent trend in computing science for component-based or component-oriented software engineering – in which new programs are constructed by reusing programme components, which may be available in libraries [2]. A new functionality is constructed by linking-together many pre-existing chunks of software. Implicit is the notion that it makes sense to reuse functional units when they have proved effective in the past – the same could apply to the principle of reusing functional units of English language, which have previously proved effective in expressing standard scientific concepts.

I suggest that journal editors should, in their instructions to authors, explicitly allow this ‘component-oriented’ method of constructing scientific articles; and carefully describe how it can be accomplished in such a way that proper referencing is enforced, and full credit is allocated to the authors of the reused linguistic components.

Acknowledgement

Thanks are due to Peter Andras for the example of component-oriented software engineering.

References[1] Zhou Ping and Loet Leydesdorff, The emergence of China as a leading nation in science, Research Policy 35 (1) (2006), pp. 83–104.

The Thomson Scientific Impact Factor (IF) for Medical Hypotheses has risen to 1.299 for 2006. This means that the IF has more than doubled since 2004, when it stood at 0.607. Using Elsevier’s Scopus database; in 2004 there were 437 citations to Medical Hypotheses papers published in the previous two years – by 2006 this had trebled to 1216 citations. Monthly internet usage of Medical Hypotheses run at an average of about 26 000 papers downloaded per month. An IF of 1.3 means that Medical Hypotheses has now entered the mainstream level of ‘respectable’ medical journals, in terms of its usage by other scientists. This is particularly pleasing given the aim of the journal is to publish radical and speculative ideas. A healthy IF is important to Medical Hypotheses because the journal deploys a system of editorial review, rather than peer review, for evaluation and selection of papers. Editorial review involves selection of a journal’s content primarily by an editor who has broad experience and competence in the field, assisted by a relatively small editorial advisory board. The great advantage of editorial review is that it is able, by policy, to favour the publication of revolutionary science. But since editorial review relies on hard-to-quantify and non-transparent individual judgments, it is important for its outcomes to be open to objective evaluations. Scientometric measures of usage such as citations, impact factors and downloads constitute objective evidence concerning a journal’s usefulness. Since Medical Hypotheses is performing adequately by such criteria, this provides a powerful answer to those who fetishize peer review and regard any other system of evaluation as suspect. Journal review procedures are merely a means to the end, and the end is a journal that serves a useful function in the dynamic process of science. Medical Hypotheses can now claim to perform such a role.

***

I am pleased to report that the Thomson Scientific Impact Factor (IF) for Medical Hypotheses has risen to 1.299 for 2006. This means that the IF has more than doubled since 2004, when it stood at 0.607 (www.scientific.thomson.com).

The IF is (approximately) a measure of the average number of times a paper in a journal is likely to be cited. Although there are important differences in citations according to research fields, and although IF has limitations if used to evaluate the potential importance of specific articles or specific scientists over the short term; nonetheless, I regard the general level of IF as a broadly valid measure of a journal’s importance among scientific peers.

Another measure of a journal’s profile in the scientific literature is the total number of citations per year, and here too Medical Hypotheses is thriving. Using Elsevier’s Scopus database (www.scopus.com), in 2004 there were 437 citations to Medical Hypotheses papers published in the previous two years – by 2006 this had trebled to 1216 citations. The journal’s influence is clearly expanding.

Furthermore, the monthly internet usage of Medical Hypotheses 2005–6 runs at an average of about 26 000 papers downloaded per month, which again indicates a very healthy level of interest from the broad scientific community (www.intl.elsevierhealth.com//journals/MeHy).

Aside from professional scientific considerations, Medical Hypotheses has an unusually high media impact (as can be seen by looking at internet news sources or performing web searches). Of particular interest to Medical Hypotheses readers is the imminent publication of a book about the journal, written by Roger Dobson and published by Cyan Books (London, UK). The book is titled: Death can be cured: and 99 other Medical Hypotheses. I have written a foreword, and can recommend the book as an edifying and amusing journey through some of the more stimulating ideas that have been published in the journal over recent years.

An IF of 1.3 means that Medical Hypotheses has now entered the mainstream level of ‘respectable’ medical journals, in terms of its usage by other scientists, and the probability is that this figure will rise further over the next three years. This is particularly pleasing given the aim of the journal is to publish radical and exploratory ideas [1] and [2], which inevitably means a greater risk that papers will be ignored by other researchers as being too speculative.

Another reason that a healthy IF is important to Medical Hypotheses is that the journal usually deploys a system of editorial review, rather than peer review, for evaluation and selection of papers.

Peer review in journals is used in a wide range of academic subjects including the arts and social sciences, and for most of its history science did not use modern methods of peer review; so that contrary to common assertions, peer review is neither distinctive nor essential to the natural sciences. What characterizes science is in fact evaluation by ‘peer usage’ – extrapolating facts and ideas to predict future observations, and making such observations in order to test published facts and ideas [3] and [4]. In other words, scientific evaluation comes after publication, and not before.

Currently, peer review in journals is a system whereby a prospective paper is vetted by gathering the opinions of two or three specialists in the field, any of which can (in practice) usually veto publication. The result of rigorous peer review (although most peer review, being unpaid and done as a favour, is probably far from rigorous) tends to be that published work is more reliable but less ambitious [1] and [5]: peer reviewed publications tend to be incremental advances on previous knowledge, performed by accredited professionals, and attained by standard techniques [4].

If Kuhn’s distinction between ‘revolutionary’ and ‘normal’ science is used [6] then peer reviewed research is therefore usually valuable for normal science, and when rigorous may then enable research to be regarded as probably valid at the time of publication. But the intrinsic tendency is for peer reviewed research to be limited in its scope and ambition so peer review intrinsically discriminates against revolutionary science [5].

Since Medical Hypotheses aspires to be a journal of revolutionary science ideas [1] and [2], it is clear that this aim would tend to be thwarted by peer review. Research which aspires to be ‘revolutionary’ science is relatively unlikely to get through the innate conservatism of peer review [5], since bold ideas are indeed less likely to be correct than cautious ideas. Looking back at the golden age of revolutionary biological science during the mid-twentieth century, it seems obvious that modern peer review would likely have killed the necessary ferment of radical speculations; some which turned-out to be accurate, but most of which were mistaken [7].

Until a few decades ago, the evaluation of scientific papers for journals was mainly by a process which I term ‘editorial review’. Editorial review involves selection of a journal’s content primarily by an editor who has broad experience and competence in the field, assisted (to a greater or lesser extent) by a relatively small editorial advisory board. The great advantage of editorial review – from the perspective of Medical Hypotheses – is that it is able, by policy, to favour the publication of revolutionary science.

Naturally, editorial review relies on hard-to-quantify and non-transparent individual judgments, which is why it is particularly important for its outcomes to be open to objective evaluations. Scientometric measures of usage such as citations, impact factors and downloads – albeit incomplete and imperfect – are all objective evaluations which tend to quantify a journal’s usefulness. So long as Medical Hypotheses is performing adequately by such criteria, this provides a powerful answer to those who fetishize peer review and regard any other system of evaluation as suspect.

In the end, journal review procedures are merely a means to the end, and the end is a journal that serves a useful function in the dynamic process of science [3]. Medical Hypotheses can now claim to perform such a role.

Acknowledgement

Thanks are due to Tanya Wheatley, Senior Publishing Editor in Health Sciences at Elsevier, for some of this data; and for her invaluable editorial support and strategic advice. I also like to thank the authors of Medical Hypotheses publications during the time of my editorship so far: upon their work, everything else depends.

Saturday, 1 September 2007

It is often asserted that peer review is the essence of scientific evaluation, but this is incorrect. Peer review is not specific to science but is employed by all academic subjects from English literature to theology. Neither is it necessary to science. Until a few decades ago—and during the scientific golden age of the mid-20th century—there was very little peer review in the modern sense. So peer review is neither necessary nor sufficient for scientific progress.

The truly definitive scientific evaluation is in fact "peer usage," which entails testing facts and theories not by opinion but in actual practice. This means that, even when published in the best journals, new science should never be regarded as valid until its predictions have been retrospectively validated by use in further relevant research by competent scientific peers.

Peer usage is essential to science because it evaluates how research stands up when used for intervening in the natural world. This is often termed "replication"; however, it is not usually repetition but instead a process by which ideas and facts are incorporated into future successful research. As long as later research that is built on earlier research continues to grow and thrive, then that earlier science is provisionally regarded as valid.

But peer usage is a retrospective process, and testing science by usage is slow and expensive. It involves persuading other scientists that it is worth their while to expend energy and resources. Evaluation by peer usage has a timescale of years. Published research must be noticed, read, understood, incorporated; new work must be planned and executed, then published, noticed, read, etc. Peer usage is also incomplete, because more scientific theories and findings are published than can ever be checked in practice. Only a small percentage of published science ever actually gets evaluated by peer usage.

As a result, there has been a major shift away from retrospective peer usage towards the predictive process of peer review. Peer review is faster (taking weeks rather than years) and cheaper (because it asks only for opinions). In effect peer review is prospective filtering by a consensus of informed judgment.

Although peer review is not specifically scientific, in principle it can identify ideas and facts that are probably correct, so long as research is an incremental extrapolation of established knowledge, methods are standard and well established, and investigations are performed by researchers of validated competence. In other words, peer review usually works well for applied science or "research and development."

However, peer opinion becomes markedly less valid when research is more ambitious and radical. Many or most major scientific advances were initially rejected by peer review. This implies that there is a continuing need for other methods of evaluating radical and ambitious science.

Traditionally, editorial review is the main alternative to peer review. A scientist editor or editorial team applies a sieve, with varying degrees of selectivity, to research submissions. Strictly, this process should not attempt to predict whether ideas and facts are "true," because truth can be established only in retrospect. Instead, editorial selection works within constraints of subject matter on the basis of factors such as potential importance and interest, clarity and appropriateness of expression, and broad criteria of scientific plausibility. Even probably untrue papers may be judged worth publishing if they contain aspects (ideas, perspectives, data) that are potentially stimulating to the development of future science.

In my personal experience, editorial review remains a viable model for publishing in modern biomedical science. Medical Hypotheses explicitly uses editorial review and aims to publish bold and radical ideas; yet the journal has a 2006 impact factor of 1.299, and papers are downloaded an average of 26 000 times per month. This implies that the journal is being used by other scientists to a significant and worthwhile extent.

The most prestigious scientific journals like to imply that their publications are not just radical but also true. This is simply hype. When published science is (almost certainly) true then it cannot be important; and when science is potentially revolutionary then it cannot be regarded as true (until subjected to evaluation by peer usage).

Peer review is valuable for predicting the probable validity of modestly incremental science; but there remains an important role for journals that use editorial review, on the basis that true scientific validity can be established only after publication, by the slow and rigorous methods of peer usage.

Wednesday, 8 August 2007

*Since writing this piece my understanding has changed and I now believe it contains fundamental flaws. Anyone who would like further clarification is welcome to e-mail me at hklaxnessat- yahoo.com*

Editorial

Charlton BG. An evolutionary cosmology for scientists – and the modern world in general. Medical Hypotheses. 2007; 69:713-7.

***

Summary

I believe that people will not feel comfortable and positive about the contemporary world until we can endorse and believe an evolutionary cosmology which is appropriate to modern conditions. A cosmology is a mythical account of the universe as it presents itself to the human mind; it needs to be poetic, symbolic, inspiring of a sense of awe and mystery. Furthermore, a complete cosmology should include the three levels of macro-, meso- and micro-cosm, in order to understand the nature of the universe, human society, and the individual’s relation to them. Traditional cosmologies described an eternal underlying structure to ultimate reality – a static ideal state towards which the world ought to gravitate. However, modern life is characterized by rapid growth, novelty, destruction and fluidity of all kinds of structures, a feature which traditional static cosmologies interpret negatively and pessimistically. A modern cosmology therefore needs to be focused on underlying dynamic process instead of structure and stasis. Biologists are better placed than many to appreciate a cosmology based on evolutionary change; because this is the mainstream understanding of adaptation and diversity in the natural world. The same dynamic, neophiliac and open-ended process of ‘creative destruction’ can be seen at work in science, economics, and modern spirituality. But a modern cosmology will only be experienced as both deep and spontaneous when it takes the form of a mythic account that is first encountered and assimilated during childhood. Since myths arise as a consequence of human creativity; there is a vital future mythogenic role for artists in the realm of ideas, images and stories: people such as mystics, poets and philosophers – including, I hope and expect, creatively inspired scientists.

***

I believe that people will not feel comfortable and positive about the contemporary world until we can endorse and believe an evolutionary cosmology which is appropriate to modern conditions. We already have the analytic and theoretical understanding to generate such a cosmology – but its achievement awaits future mythogenic work by creative artists in ideas, images and stories – including inspired scientists.

The need to feel ‘at home in the world’

The modern world currently lacks an appropriate and generally accepted cosmology – existing cosmologies incorporate dysfunctional pre-modern concepts and are confined to minority sub-groups. Probably this deficiency is responsible for much cultural and individual pessimism. Because people do not have a basic symbolic understanding of the modern world and modern humanity’s place in it, they experience conflict between their cosmology and what they observe and experience. This mismatch between traditional cosmology and contemporary actuality is alienating. Consequently the modern world is frequently perceived as chaotic, meaningless, declining or collapsing.

Traditional cosmologies described an eternal underlying structure to ultimate reality – a static ideal state towards which the world ought to gravitate. However, modern life is characterized by rapid fluidity of all kinds of structures, including innovation and destruction, and growth in complexity of communications without a pre-established end-point. We do not know where we are going, yet we are accelerating towards it.

A modern cosmology therefore needs to be focused on underlying process instead of structure, on dynamism rather than stasis. If modern individuals become able to develop a mythic understanding of the evolutionary nature of things-in-general then their experience of change will match their deepest expectations. Consequently, people may be more likely to feel ‘at home’ in the world and broadly optimistic about the future.

Biologists are better placed than many to appreciate a cosmology based on evolutionary change; because this is the mainstream understanding of adaptation and diversity in the natural world as the result of a competitive evolutionary process (i.e. natural selection). Furthermore the same process can be seen at work in the history of science itself.

What is a cosmology?

A cosmology is an account of the universe as it presents itself to the human mind. And although any plausible cosmology must be compatible with accepted current knowledge, a cosmology is not just the facts. In order to fulfil its psychological function a cosmology needs to be poetic, symbolic, inspiring of a sense of awe and mystery. It is the subjective basis of individual understanding of one’s place in the world, and expectations of the future [1].

Provision of a cosmology is one of the four main functions of mythology [2]. A complete cosmology should include the three levels of macro-, meso- and micro-cosm, in order to understand the universe, human society, and the individual’s relation to them. The macro-cosm is the natural world; and macro-cosmology is concerned with how things came to be and where they are going – including the creation of the universe, and the origins of life including human life. The meso-cosm is human society; and meso-cosmology describes how society emerged and developed and where it is aiming. The micro-cosm refers to human psychology and especially subjective consciousness. To form a complete cosmology, these three levels of macro, meso and micro need to be related by the same explanatory model, so that the universe is seen as a unified whole [1].

The basis for a modern cosmology which explains macro, meso and micro levels is well established in scientific domains such as the evolution of complex systems, selection mechanisms, complexity theory, self-organization, and the phenomenon of emergence e.g. [3], [4] and [5]. This type of meta-model provides an outline summary of content of a possible modern cosmology. However, analytic understanding is not in itself a cosmology, since it lacks the necessary poetic and symbolic mode of expression which is characteristic of myth [1] and [2]. To render evolutionary cosmology into myth is the future task of creative individuals working in ideas, images, symbols and stories.

Science is a process

Many scientists have an implicit general understanding of the interaction between humans and the natural world in terms of the functioning of science.

This includes such features as science being an open-ended process and not a specific set of facts and theories; that science is about change and transformation of structures; that science grows in complexity and explanatory scope over time; and that progress in science entails an intrinsic relationship between creation and destruction [6]. Science is therefore a process with direction but no specific goal, dynamic and open-ended; and an activity that does not aim at an ultimate complete, static and final state but at a continuous perpetuation of scientific progress.

Jacob Bronowski did a convincing and inspiring job of mythologizing the process of science and its relation to other social domains such as the arts and politics – and this account has become widely known [7]. However, he died before completing this task, and in particular the micro-cosmic domain of human consciousness was left-out of Bronowski’s synthesis.

By contrast with the scientific perspective, for traditional societies the cosmos was closed and finite. ‘Closed’ because although sometimes forms of life transformed and blended, there were no new forms and the eternal underlying forms were never permanently destroyed. ‘Finite’ because life energies circulated but they did not grow. There was neither ultimate destruction nor genuine novelty of creation. At root all discovery was re-discovery [8].

Creative destruction as a principle of evolutionary change

In science there is real creation and also real destruction, such that new energies are made available by increasing efficiency and re-allocating the liberated resources [6].

For example Popper’s philosophy of science is as much about destruction of superseded ideas as the creation of improved theories – famously he focused on refutation and falsification rather than proof [9]. Kuhnian revolutions were as much about discarding superseded science as about creating new theories [10]. Obsolete concepts from ‘Classical Physics’ such as ‘the ether’ and ‘phlogiston’ were discarded to allow scientific efforts to be re-allocated to focus on the new areas of relativity and quantum theory.

In economics these positive and negative aspects of evolutionary growth are linked in the concept of ‘creative destruction’ [11]. So, the essence of the capitalist economy is that creation typically depends upon destruction; because creative entrepreneurs are agents of disruption. The energies which fuel creation of new forms (e.g. business practices, products, technologies) come from the destruction of old forms [5]. Resources saved by destruction of the obsolete are invested into innovation. Economic novelty and improvement therefore feeds-upon the shrinking and extinction of that which is old and inferior.

In other words, the underlying processes of market economics and social evolution in general can be analyzed as being precisely analogous to the processes of science [12]. Creative destruction is another way of describing the primacy of process and the subordination of specific forms. Both science and economics are therefore specific examples of selection mechanisms [13], or (more generally) instances of the evolution of complex systems [5].

Progress – whether in science or economics (or consciousness – see below) – is open-ended because it is fuelled by its own success, and success intrinsically includes both creation and destruction. Consequently we do not know in advance the limits or bounds of future evolutionary change, and growth can continue as long as creative destruction continues to improve efficiency [5].

Creative destruction in modern spirituality

The same evolutionary understanding of dynamic, creative destruction which applies to science and economics applies also to human consciousness.

Modern spirituality is often described as ‘seeking’ – because it is a continuous, lifelong and experimental process aiming at maintaining the growth of long-term personal motivation, energy and fulfilment [1], [2] and [14]. In contrast with the ideal state of permanent contemplative bliss associated with traditional religions, for New Age spirituality there is both genuine novelty and genuine loss in the inner world of subjective perceptions. Spiritual seekers learn new things and forget old things, give-up established life-ways and embark on new ones whenever old practices becomes stale.

Success or failure in this ‘evolution of consciousness’ is evaluated by individuals introspectively and for themselves – nobody else’s opinion need be involved [14]. And spirituality is compatible with science because spiritual ideas are subjective, private, symbolical and metaphorical while scientific ideas are objective, public, precise and literal [15] and [16]. Therefore, for most people most of the time spiritual ideas are not in competition with scientific ideas and each domain has a distinct objective and realm of applicability [17]. Because of this separation in terms of scope and procedures, science and modern spirituality have grown side-by-side in the USA – which is both the premier scientific nation and the primary source of much New Age spirituality.

People increasingly recognize that attitudes, beliefs, and life itself cannot continue unchanged – even if we sometimes wish that they could. Over time, spiritually positive and fruitful ideas tend to grow and become elaborated because they are motivating and energizing, while negative ideas which lead to despair or demoralization will tend to diminish and be discarded. This has led to the notably hopeful and optimistic stance of New Age spirituality, compared with most traditional religions [14] and [16].

Creative destruction is therefore at work in the inner world, as well as the outer. Life energy to invest in new personal projects is found by abandoning unsuccessful past projects because they became ineffective or inefficient at generating motivation; and re-allocating our efforts into more hopeful and efficiently gratifying goals. New beliefs and practices are therefore intrinsically disruptive because they grow and make space for themselves at the expense of old ones.

New Age spirituality can be seen to share precisely the same underlying process as science and free market economics: the process of transformative growth by creative destruction. It is a typically modern process which has direction but no goal; it is changing, dynamic and open-ended; and is not aiming at a static final state but rather at the perpetuation of progress.

From the perspective of a traditional religious cosmology, an evolutionary, process-oriented modern cosmology does not seem like a cosmology at all [5]. For example, an evolutionary cosmology does not offer an eternally valid structural description of the ultimate nature of the universe.

Furthermore, modern cosmology may seem to lack an adequate ethical basis – while many traditional cosmologies incorporate universal ethical distinctions as the core of reality.

In modern societies, the scope of proper ethical behaviour is not universal but particular; morality tends to be specialized to specific social functions [5]. For example, scientific research ethics are different from business ethics, and both are different from ethics appropriate within families. Furthermore, socially approved behaviour changes over time, so that what was good and bad may become transposed. For instance, modern sexual ethics and practices are regarded as immoral by traditional societies; and the imperative of loyalty to the extended-family or ethnic group in traditional societies is regarded as racist or corrupt by modern societies.

But it is characteristic of modern evolutionary cosmology to be positive towards new things – it is characterized by ‘neophilia’ (i.e. love of novelty). While new things can turn-out bad as well as good (indeed this happens more often than not), novelty is generally favoured because it is necessary for continued growth. Conversely, the lack of novelty is seen as dull and probably degenerate. For evolution to operate, a surplus of new choices and options must be generated and tried-out in practice and in competition with each other and with older patterns. In the longer term, the newness which is retained and built-upon is that which turns-out to be more efficient at fulfilling its objectives and provides growing-points that are fruitful for continued longer-term growth in communications [5].

Novelty involves creative destruction. A predisposition to pay attention to the new diverts attention away from the old. The known good may be risked or sacrificed in the short term by the hope for even-better things to emerge in the long term. And even when things improve overall and in the long term, evolutionary growth inevitably involves real losses. Progress is inextricably mixed with degeneration.

As Kevin Kelly has described (‘That we will embrace the reality of progress’; www.edge.org accessed 22 May 2007), the margin of benefit over harm resulting from change may be small, and the problems deriving from change may be almost as great as the solutions generated; but so long as there is a balance of benefit on average, in a dynamic process operating over time this accumulates by ‘compound interest’ such that it soon becomes deserving of the name of progress. Just one percent overall improvement per year doubles overall benefits in 70 years.

The ethical dimension of modern cosmology is related to the favouring of dynamic processes over static states [18]. The positive valuation of open-endedness can be seen in science, where a fertile theory or technology (i.e. one which leads to the establishment of a new field of research) is more highly valued than a discovery which closes-off a line of enquiry. Political or economic policies which trigger growth are preferred to those which aim to fix the status quo. And modern people most value ideas and experiences which lead to dynamic personal learning, development and improvement.

A state of open-ended and perpetual change, while anxiety-producing, is implicitly regarded as preferable to stasis, since stasis is regarded as prima facie evidence of stagnation. Although change often turns out to be fashion-driven and either pointless or damaging; nonetheless, in a growing society stasis is indeed equivalent to relative decline. So, because modernity seeks positive sources of energy and motivation at macro, meso and micro levels – an evolutionary cosmology requires the built-in expectation of preventing closure, facilitating disruption, and taking risks in order to maintain eventual cumulative progress.

The mythogenic role of creative minds

To conclude, modern societies in general need a cosmology which is both compatible-with and supportive-of, the fundamental basis of the modern condition. For scientists specifically, a viable cosmology must be compatible not just with current knowledge, but also with the intrinsic changeability and open-ended quality of knowledge. Only a process-orientated and evolutionary cosmology would seem to fit the bill.

So, a modern evolutionary cosmology should explain, foster and maintain the kind of dynamism shared by science, society and the requirements of human consciousness. Such a cosmology should support positive emotions and feelings in the human individual. At macro-, meso- and micro-cosmic levels; existing strategies must be discarded when they become ineffective or when something (potentially) better has become available.

Traditional cosmologies took the form of poetic, symbolic myths and the same must apply to modern cosmology. And the way that myths arise is a consequence of human creativity: specifically the work of artists in the realm of ideas, images and stories: people such as shamans, mystics, poets and philosophers [1]. Once created, mythic forms are selected and refined in a communal process. In traditional societies this was done by ‘the folk’ leading to the many myths characteristic of local ethnic groups. The modern equivalent of the folk is the global mass media, and mass media communications now serve to generate and maintain social cohesion spanning hundreds of millions of people and many thousand of miles [19]. To fulfil its role, a modern evolutionary cosmology must therefore become a permanent part of the global mass media.

If modern individuals are to ‘feel at home in the world’, this requires not just acceptance but delight in the spectacle of the dynamic evolution of complexity. Such a cosmology will probably only be experienced as both deep and spontaneous when it has become a myth that is encountered and assimilated during childhood and developed throughout adult life. An evolutionary cosmology needs to have versions which are simple enough for a child to understand, and also to have the potential for elaboration into more complex explanatory models which are believable and useful to highly educated modern specialists such as scientists.

Scientists are in a position to be among the first to recognize that we now have the intellectual tools for explaining how the growing diversity of modern systems and perspectives is unified by evolutionary processes. To use this analytic understanding and create a poetic modern cosmology is the task of future mystics, artists and philosophers – including, I hope and expect, creatively inspired scientists.

[18] V. Postrel, The future and its enemies, Free Press, New York (1999).

[19] B.G. Charlton, The paradox of the modern mass media: probably the major source of social cohesion in liberal democracies, even though its content is often socially divisive, Med Hypotheses 67 (2006), pp. 205–208.

Saturday, 21 July 2007

Once I had a bizarre dream in which I was vouchsafed a secret which would ensure my wealth and success. It was the title for a comic novel; one supposedly so funny that it would guarantee classic status for any book: Oh Colonel Flastratus! The distinctive feature about my dream was its quality of profound significance, which felt akin to the Eureka moment of a scientific discovery. This led me to question whether the ‘peak experience’ (PE) of scientific discovery might be as delusional as my dream. On the one hand, euphoric elation attached to a discovery does not guarantee that insights objective truth – implications must be spelled-out and checked. The easy induction of pseudo-profound insights by intoxicants serves as a warning of the potential pitfalls. An arbitrary object becomes labeled with an obscure sense of delight and personal relevance in a process that could be termed the Colonel Flastratus! phenomenon. But neither are peak experiences irrelevant. A scientific PE is some kind of personal guarantee of the subjective truth of an insight – a signal that states: ‘This is high quality stuff, by your standards. Do not ignore it, do not forget it, try to understand it’. Peak experiences in science could therefore be considered the result of a ‘significance alarm’ going off in the brain and their objective value depends on the specialized cognitive quality of that specific brain. So scientists may be correct to take peak experiences seriously. Perhaps the best approach is to regard the scientific PE as a signal from the self to the self, a subjectively evaluated and auto-administered emotional reward for good thinking.

***

Once I had a bizarre dream in which I was vouchsafed a secret which would ensure my wealth and success [1].

I will share the secret. It was the title for a comic novel – a title so loaded with humorous potential, so funny even in its own right, that it would (I was assured) guarantee classic status for any book to which it was attached. The title was Oh Colonel Flastratus!

The important factors about this title were twofold. Firstly that the word ‘Colonel’ should be spelled conventionally but pronounced in three syllables – Col-oh-nell. Somehow this had to be communicated to the potential audience through advertising. And secondly the exclamation mark at the end was vital in order to demonstrate the correct tone of exasperation.

The distinctive feature about my dream was not its silliness but that for several minutes, at least, the event possessed a quality of profound significance. On awakening I wrote down the title and puzzled over its meaning and consequences. Quite abruptly it dawned on me that, whatever its numinous quality, the objective validity of my experience was nil. The only ‘funny’ thing about Oh Colonel Flastratus! was the surrealist absurdity of my having attached significance to it.

Scientific discovery and the peak experience

But if it had not been for this absurdity, my dream had a weird similarity to the psychological experience of making a scientific discovery – a Eureka moment. Yet the information was nonsense. This led me to question whether the ‘peak experience’ (PE; [2] and [3]) of a scientific discovery and overwhelming conviction of being right, might be as delusional as my dream.

There are psychological similarities between many scientific discoveries. A memorable example was that of the mathematician Andrew Wiles when he finally solved ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’ after working on the problem for seven years in solitude and secrecy, announcing success, finding a flaw in the reasoning, then… ‘Suddenly, totally unexpectedly, I had this incredible revelation… It was so indescribably beautiful; it was so simple and so elegant. I just stared in disbelief [4].

Leo Szilard, discoverer of the principle of nuclear fission, wrote: ‘I remember that I stopped for a red light… As the light changed to green it suddenly occurred to me that if we could find an element… which would emit two neutrons when it absorbed one neutron [this] could sustain a nuclear chain reaction’ [5]. Thus was discovered the concept which led directly to the atom bomb.

I have also experienced these moments. For example, one evening I had stayed behind to examine some new microscope slides of the human adrenal gland which had been stained to show both the cholinergic and adrenergic nerves. The cholinergic nerves were dark brown, while the adrenergic nerves glowed green under a fluorescent lamp. When I flipped the microscope back and forth between natural light and fluorescent light I suddenly realized that the slender, knobbly green nerves were winding over and around the thick trunks of brown nerves. The two systems were entwined, but the cholinergic nerves were passing through the gland while the adrenergic nerves were releasing their noradrenaline into the substance of the cortex. It suddenly dawned that nobody had ever seen this before.

I felt that I was the first person in human history to know this new thing about the natural world – or at least the world of human adrenals.

Scientific significance of the peak experience

So far as I know, my anatomical insight [6] is still regarded as correct. But if I am candid, I have also had peak experiences from making a discovery [7] which I later regarded as mistaken [1] or about which [8] I changed my mind [9] soon afterwards. Clearly, a peak experience related to making a discovery does not validate that study: a profound sense of insight does not guarantee that insights objective truth – the implications must be spelled-out and checked.

But neither are peak experiences irrelevant. My hunch is that a scientific PE is some kind of personal guarantee of the subjective truth of an insight. In other words, scientific PEs are a marker which the mind attaches to those of its insights the mind considers most profound – a signal that states: ‘This is good stuff, by your standards. Do not ignore it, do not forget it, try to understand it’.

The PE seems to function as a means of focusing attention – the characteristic emotion asserts that the marked insight is something we should dwell upon, puzzle over, sort out – do something about. It seems to me that a vital component of the PE is exactly this sense of a call to action. The PE is not – or should not be – simply a passive feeling of euphoric fulfillment.

Whatever the role of inspiration, scientific breakthroughs do not come from those who are ignorant and uneducated concerning the matter in hand. Science requires knowledge and skill as well as the right state of mind. The probable objective validity of a scientific peak experience is affected by the quality of the scientist’s thinking and preparation, and how well he has internalized the processes and constraints of his discipline.

The objective validity of the scientific peak experience is eventually determined, if at all, not by a psychological imprimatur, but by its public dimension – whether it stands up in peer usage [10] and [11].

Therefore, peak experience insights have the potential to mislead as well as enlighten. The easy induction of pseudo-profound insights by intoxicants serves as a warning of the potential pitfalls. When the mind is deranged by drugs, delirium or drowsiness, then this emotion may short-circuit and ‘spontaneously discharge’ to become attached to almost any event – such as an idiosyncratic pronunciation of the word ‘Coll-oh-nell’ or the importance of an exclamation mark.

Peak experiences in science could be considered the result of a ‘significance alarm’ going off in the brain. When the brain is working properly, this alarm will only be triggered when something potentially ‘important’ has happened, something worthy of sustained attention. The potential validity of the insight depends on the inner world of personal scientific understanding matching-up sufficiently with the outer world of science as it emerges over time from the interaction of many scientific communications.

So scientists may be acting correctly when they take peak experiences seriously, especially if they are expert in the field in which their apparently-significant discovery has occurred. But the content of peak experiences should not be taken at face value, because of the Col-oh-nell Flastratus! phenomenon.

Perhaps the best approach is to regard the scientific PE as a signal from the self to the self: a subjectively-evaluated and auto-administered emotional reward for good thinking.

In a recent Medical Hypotheses editorial, I suggested the name psychological neoteny (PN) to refer to the widely-observed phenomenon that adults in modernizing liberal democracies increasingly retain many of the attitudes and behaviors traditionally associated with youth. I further suggested that PN is a useful trait for both individuals and the culture in modernizing societies; because people need to be somewhat child-like in their psychology order to keep learning, developing and adapting to the rapid and accelerating pace of change. Thirdly, I put forward the hypothesis that the major cause of PN in modernizing societies is the prolonged duration of formal education. Here I present a preliminary empirical investigation of this hypothesis of psychological neoteny. Marriage and parenthood are indicative of making a choice to ‘settle down’ and thereby move on from the more flexible lifestyle of youth; and furthermore these are usually commitments which themselves induce a settling down and maturation of attitudes and behaviors. A sevenfold expansion of participation in UK higher education up to 2001 was reflected in delay in marriage and parenthood. Increasing number of years of education is quantitatively the most important predictor of increasing age of the mother at the time of her first birth: among women college graduates about half are aged 30 or older at the time of their first birth – a rise of 400% in 25 years. Parenthood is associated with a broad range of psychologically ‘maturing’ and socially-integrating effects in both men and women. However, the economic effect is different in men and women: after parenthood men are more likely to have a job and work more hours while women change in the opposite direction. The conclusion is that psychological neoteny is indeed increasing, and mainly as a consequence of the increasing percentage of school leavers going into higher education. But at present it is unclear whether this trend is overall beneficial or harmful; and the answer may be different for men and women.

***

Causes and consequences of psychological neoteny

In a recent Medical Hypotheses editorial, I suggested the name Psychological Neoteny (PN) to refer to the widely-observed phenomenon that adults in modernizing liberal democracies increasingly retain many of the attitudes and behaviours traditionally associated with youth [1]. ‘Neoteny’ refers to the biological phenomenon whereby development is delayed such that juvenile characteristics are retained into maturity.

I further suggested that PN is a useful trait for both individuals and the culture in modernizing societies. Modern cultures are characterized by rapid and accelerating pace of change, which demands a much higher degree of cognitive flexibility than traditional societies of the past [2]. As a result, it helps if people retain a somewhat child-like psychology. Cognitive flexibility is useful when we need to keep developing, adapting and learning. Of course the positive benefits of maturity are also delayed, and the downside to PN includes some less desirable faults of youth – such as irresponsibility, short attention span, and novelty-seeking.

Thirdly, I put forward the hypothesis that the major cause of PN in modernizing societies is the prolonged duration of formal education, when an ever-increasing proportion of the school leavers go straight on to attend colleges and universities, and attend these institutions for increasing numbers of years. Formal education rewards youthful traits such as cognitive flexibility and the drive to acquire now knowledge and skills [3]. Higher education also delays key life experiences which tend to induce psychological maturity, such as marriage and parenthood.

Here I present a preliminary empirical investigation of my hypothesis that psychological neoteny is mainly caused by higher education.

Analysis

It is obvious that an increasing proportion of school leavers are moving on to higher education in all modern liberal democracies, and in many countries the expansion of participation in higher education has been profound (Table 1).

The sevenfold expansion of API in UK higher education up to 2001 was reflected in delay in marriage (Table 2) and parenthood (Table 3) with an increasing average age of mothers at the birth of their first child.

Table 2.

Social trends 34 – http://www.statistics.gov.uk – average age at marriage and divorce: England and Wales Date Age males Age females1971 24.6 22.61981 25.4 23.11991 27.5 25.52001 30.6 28.4Average age in years at first marriage for males and females.

Table 3.

From social trends 34 – http://www.statistics.gov.uk – average age in years of mother by birth order: England and Wales, first child Date Age (years)1971 23.71981 24.81991 25.62001 26.5Marriage and parenthood are indicative of making a choice to ’settle down’ and thereby move on from the more flexible lifestyle of youth; and furthermore these are usually commitments which themselves induce a settling down and maturation of attitudes and behaviors. First marriage and age of first child are correlated [5], but parenthood has probably replaced marriage as the main transitional stage in modern societies like the USA [6].

The most important predictor of increasing age of the mother at the time of her first birth is the number of years of education [7]. For example, in the USA the median age at first birth has increased rapidly among women with 12 or more years of education [8]. In 1969, 10.2% of college graduate women were age 30 or older at the time of their first birth but in 1994 this had risen over 400% to 45.5%. By contrast, among women with only 9–11 years of education this rise was just 50%, with only 2.5% of first births in 1994 occurred at age 30 plus.

It seems clear, therefore, that the proportion of school leavers going into higher education has increased massively, and also that these extra years of education lead to later marriage and parenthood.

The psychologically ‘maturing’ and socially-integrating effect of parenthood on attitudes and behavior of married parents is obvious and uncontroversial [9], especially for women – who remain the main carers for children [10]. But the effect of parenthood for men seems also to be significant, with reduced socializing with friends, and increased participation in extended family activities, service activities, churches, and hours at work [11].

There also seem to be significant differences between men and women. Men are more likely to have a job and work more hours after parenthood, while women’ behavior changes in the opposite direction (Table 4).

Table 4.

Effects of parenthood on employed work 1992–1993, USA In paid employment (%) Hours of work/week (h)Women – no children 78 39.2Women – with children 68 34.6Men – no children 88 46.4Men – with children 92 47.3From [12]. Expressed as mean averages.

So, delayed parenthood among college graduates will indeed tend to delay psychological maturity, and therefore be a cause of psychological neoteny.

It seems that PN is probably economically advantageous in women, because delayed parenthood results in women contributing more in the labour market. Conversely PN may be (to a lesser extent) economically detrimental in men. One possible implication is that, strictly in economic terms, it might be beneficial for women to have children at an older age than men – reversing the traditional pattern. Of course, such a shift may be unpopular and would have other disadvantages.

Conclusion

Clearly, this small and selective survey of the literature does not constitute a rigorous test of the hypothesis that higher education causes psychological neoteny, but is intended as a first look at some illustrative data to check that it is broadly consistent with the predications of the theory – which it is.

A more thorough investigation could address the literature in a systematic fashion, checking other plausible proxy measures of maturity (such as age of first marriage, job stability, social interactions); as well as focusing on more directly psychological measures of the effect of higher education (such as surveys of attitudes and behaviours). Most importantly, the hypothesized causal relationship between retention of youthful psychological traits and subsequent economic and social success needs to be measured directly.

In conclusion, it seems likely that psychological neoteny is increasing mainly as a consequence of the increasing percentage of school leavers going into higher education. The consequences of PN are most evident in relation to women because their participation has grown rapidly over fifty years until women usually constitute the majority of students in higher education. Also the economic effect of parenthood seems greater for women than for men. Psychological neoteny may on average significantly increase an average woman’s economic productivity, but somewhat reduce that of men.

At present it is unclear whether the trend for retaining youthful attitudes and behaviours is overall beneficial or harmful. There are probably social advantages from a population retaining the cognitive flexibility to cope with (or indeed enjoy) rapid change of jobs, locations and friends; and there are economic benefits from delayed parenthood in women. But there will also be social disadvantages from delayed maturity of adults, perhaps impairing social integration among men, and reducing population fertility levels. And, at the individual and personal level, the costs and benefits of PN may be different for men and women, and for people with different priorities.

Dedication

This essay is dedicated to the memory of the late Martin Trow, Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Martin died February 24 2007 aged 80. For the past few years he was my frequent e-mail pen-friend; a delightful correspondent who combined youthful vitality and curiosity with the wisdom and knowledge of maturity. He was the acknowledged authority on the transition from elite to mass higher education, and its consequences. I got the idea of psychological neoteny from some of Martin’s off-the-cuff remarks about universities in relation to modern society.

The Nobel prize for medicine or physiology, the Lasker award for clinical medicine, and the Gairdner international award are given to individuals for their role in developing theories, technologies and discoveries which have changed the direction of biomedical science. These distinctions have been used to develop an NLG metric to measure research performance and trends in ‘revolutionary’ biomedical science with the aim of identifying the premier revolutionary science research institutions and nations from 1992–2006. I have previously argued that the number of Nobel laureates in the biomedical field should be expanded to about nine per year and the NLG metric attempts to predict the possible results of such an expansion. One hundred and nineteen NLG prizes and awards were made during the past fifteen years (about eight per year) when overlapping awards had been removed. Eighty-five were won by the USA, revealing a massive domination in revolutionary biomedical science by this nation; the UK was second with sixteen awards; Canada had five, Australia four and Germany three. The USA had twelve elite centres of revolutionary biomedical science, with University of Washington at Seattle and MIT in first position with six awards and prizes each; Rockefeller University and Caltech were jointly second placed with five. Surprisingly, Harvard University – which many people rank as the premier world research centre – failed to reach the threshold of three prizes and awards, and was not included in the elite list. The University of Oxford, UK, was the only institution outside of the USA which featured as a significant centre of revolutionary biomedical science. Long-term success at the highest level of revolutionary biomedical science (and probably other sciences) probably requires a sufficiently large number of individually-successful large institutions in open competition with one another – as in the USA. If this model cannot be replicated within smaller nations, then it implies that such arrangements need to be encouraged and facilitated in multi-national units.

***

I have previously argued that Nobel prizes (and other similar international awards and medals) may be used in scientometrics to measure research performance and trends in ‘revolutionary’ science [1]; with the aim of identifying the premier revolutionary science research institutions and nations [2].

Nobel prizes are typically awarded for theories, technologies and discoveries which have changed the direction of a science. By contrast, most successful scientific research is ‘normal science’ which represents a more incremental improvement on already existing work: normal science takes science further in an established direction rather than starting a new direction [1], [2] and [3].

Biomedical research currently constitutes the dominant world science in terms of volume, funding and prestige. I have argued that the number of Nobel laureates in the biomedical field (i.e. the prize in physiology or medicine, and sometimes chemistry) should therefore be expanded from the current maximum of three to a minimum of six, preferably nine, per year to recognize this dominance [2].

In the following analysis, I have attempted to predict the possible results of such expansion by creating a metric from Nobel prizes in physiology/medicine [4] and adding two other prestigious awards: the Lasker award for clinical medical research and the Gairdner international award; over a fifteen year time span of 1992–2006 inclusive.

The NLG metric

I recorded the national and institutional affiliations of Nobel laureates who received the prize for medicine or physiology during the period 1992–2006, affiliations were allocated for the time laureates received the prize [4]. Lasker and Gairdner awards were likewise noted for that period.

The approximately-annual Lasker Award for clinical medical research recognizes up to three scientists whose work pioneers a major improvement in clinical management or treatment [5]. Unlike the Lasker award for basic medical research, which frequently predicts a Nobel prize in Physiology/Medicine, the clinical medical research award does not frequently overlap with the Nobel prize. The Gairdner international award [6] is given to about six outstanding biomedical scientists per year, so the Gairdner award contributes about half the weight to this metric.

My impression is that early Gairdner awards considerably over-represented Canada (the award is administered from Toronto), and even now this probably still remains a small bias because Canada got five Gairdner awards (from the sixty-two included in this analysis) from 1992–2006, but no Nobels or Laskers. Therefore, I restricted this analysis to the past 15 years when the Gairdner seems to have functioned as a more validly ‘international’ award for merit. I also considered including in the revolutionary science metric the one-winner-per-year Lasker award for basic medical research, but there was such a high degree of overlap with the Gairdner award that this was omitted for the sake of simplicity and clarity.

Credit for the prize or award was given to the institution and nation to which the winner was affiliated at the time of the award (except where it was clear that the winner had moved in the past few months while awaiting the award). It would certainly be more valid to award credit to institutions and nations on the basis of where the prize- or award-winning research was actually accomplished, and I hope that future researchers will be able to do the investigative work needed to accomplish this.

Each individual scientist was counted only once, because a scientist who won more than one of these prizes and awards was credited for just one on the assumption that the Nobel is senior to the Lasker, and the Lasker is senior to the Gairdner. Credit for the prize or award was therefore given to the institution or nation to which the winner was affiliated at the time of the senior award or prize. Sometimes a Lasker or Gairdner award winner had also received a Nobel prize for chemistry (rather than medicine/physiology) – such individuals affiliations were allocated for the time of winning either the Lasker or Gairdner.

This process created a pool of one hundred and nineteen winners, which (over fifteen years) represents an average of about eight winners per year – about the number of annual laureates I recommended for the Nobel prize in medicine. As in previous analyses [7] and [8], I set a minimum threshold of three prizes or awards before an institution or nation qualified as a centre of revolutionary science, on the basis that one or two might be luck or coincidence, but three prizes/awards probably indicates systematic strength.

Measuring revolutionary science by counting such rare and highly-selective prizes and awards, and also of setting a minimum of three prizes and awards before a nation or institution registers as a significant centre, means that the NLG metric inevitably generates many false negatives. It must be presumed that many valuable centres of revolutionary science are not picked-up by this metric.

However, for the same reasons, the NLG metric is unlikely to generate many false positives; and the listed centres of revolutionary biomedical science can be assumed to deserve their elite status with a high degree of confidence – subject to the above caveats about the method of counting affiliations at the time of winning, rather than accomplishing the work which led-to winning, see Table 1 and Table 2.

Table 1.

Number of Nobel, Lasker, Gairdner (NLG) winners 1992–2005 by nation USA 85UK 16Canada 5Australia 4Germany 3A minimum of three winners is required for inclusion as a centre of revolutionary biomedical science.

Table 2.

Number of Nobel, Lasker, Gairdner (NLG) winners 1992–2005 by institution (all institutions are in the USA, excepting Oxford) MIT 6University Washington, Seattle 6 Caltech 5 Rockefeller University 5 NIH 4UCSF 4University Pennsylvania 4 Yale University 4 Columbia University 3Fred Hutchinson CRC, Seattle 3 Johns Hopkins 3Washington University, St. Louis 3 University of Oxford (UK) 3 A minimum of three winners is required for inclusion as a centre of revolutionary biomedical science. UCSF, University of California at San Francisco; CRC, Cancer Research Center.

NLG metric national and institutional analysis

The NLG metric national distribution (Table 1) reveals a massive dominance of the USA in revolutionary biomedical science, confirming the previous results of US domination for revolutionary science generally, and provides further confirmation of a trend that this US domination may be increasing [7] and [8]. The UK is a clear second, with a number of prizes and awards that is broadly in proportion to the population difference between the UK and the US. Canada, Australia and Germany also feature (although I am suspicious that Canada only qualifies by winning the Canadian-administered Gairdner award).

The finding of overwhelming US domination is particularly interesting when contrasted with the probability that the ‘rest of the world’ is probably catching-up with the USA in terms of ‘normal science’ metrics (with these metrics presumably dominated by biomedical research) such as numbers of publications and citations. For instance, the European Union nations and China, and some smaller far eastern nations (e.g. Taiwan, Souh Korea, Singapore), are probably increasing normal science production faster than the USA [9] and [10]. The implication is that only the USA has a research system which actively supports revolutionary science at the highest level [7] and [8].

The University of Washington at Seattle comes joint-top of the league table (Table 2) for revolutionary biomedical science (with MIT) which may surprise those observers who have failed to notice the rise to international prominence of this institution [7]. In a separate analysis of total Web of Science citations per US university, we also found that University of Washington was ranked fourth (after Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Stanford) [3]. So the clear implication is that University of Washington at Seattle should now be considered one of the truly elite research universities of the world, and that its pre-eminence is probably focused in biomedical science. Something similar also applies in relation to UCSF (University of California at San Francisco) [8]. It was also surprising to see the great strength of MIT in biomedical science, when this institution has traditionally been associated more with the physical sciences (and economics); and something similar applies to Caltech (joint second place) – which, unlike MIT (with Harvard), has no affiliated medical school.

Perhaps even more startling was the failure of Harvard to reach the threshold of three winners required in order to feature on this league table. During 1992–2006 Harvard achieved only two Gairdner awards and neither a Nobel prize for medicine nor a Lasker award. This confirms the relatively poor showing of Harvard in my previous analyses of performance in revolutionary science such as Nobel trends from 1947–2006 [7], and the analysis for the past 20 years which includes Fields medals, Lasker awards and Turing awards [8].

Yet during the past three decades Harvard has massively dominated all other institutions in the world in terms of scientific research production such as numbers of papers published and number of citations earned ([3], and unpublished results from Web of Science by Peter Andras and Bruce G Charlton, Newcastle University, UK). Also Harvard has topped the authoritative Shanghai Jiao Tong university table of world universities by a large margin since its inception in 2003 http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm.

My interpretation of this overall picture is that, over recent decades, Harvard has failed to orientate its priorities towards the cutting-edge of the major dominant branch of world science. The institution has clearly been successful in maintaining massive productivity in very high quality ‘normal science’; but apparently has not encouraged the much riskier endeavours in the type of revolutionary biomedical science which wins major prizes, medals and awards.

Revolutionary biomedical science outside the USA

The University of Oxford is the only institution outside of the US which has won three prizes or awards in the past fifteen years and thereby ranks as a major centre of revolutionary biomedical science. This good performance of Oxford is in-line with that university’s increasingly emphasis on science (probably especially medical science) over recent decades, and its catching-up with its UK rival Cambridge and also with the US ‘Ivy League’ in terms of science production [11] and [12].

In the UK the other thirteen prizes and awards (outside of Oxford) are scattered across nine different institutions, so that less than twenty percent of UK NLGs were won by significant UK centres of revolutionary bioscience. This contrasts with the US picture where more than fifty percent of NLGs (fifty awards and prizes out of eighty-five) were won at major research institutions – representing a greater concentration of high level revolutionary science activity. This may well herald the evolutionary emergence of a separate research system of ‘pure medical science’, as we have previously advocated [13].

Due to the limitations of the Gairdner award more than fifteen years ago, I am unsure of the long-term UK trend in revolutionary biomedical science; but given that the UK seems to be declining as a centre of revolutionary science-in-general [7] it seems a plausible hypothesis that the US dominance in revolutionary science is a consequence of having revolutionary science concentrated in a relatively large number of individually significant and successful institutions. Furthermore, these elite US institutions are apparently in competition as judged by the rise to prominence of the University of Washington at Seattle and UCSF, and the decline of Harvard. Moreover, this is apparently an open competition since it has enabled new entrants to this status as well as relegation from this status.

However, it must be remembered that the NLG only measures the visible and most fully-validated tip of an iceberg of revolutionary science. These prizes and awards credit successful revolutionary science which has changed the direction of a discipline in a big way, and where credit for this can be allocated to a single person or a few individuals. It is almost certain, on general theoretical grounds derived from complex systems theory [14], that the process of generating major breakthroughs in revolutionary science must be supported by a much larger submerged base of revolutionary science research which is harder to identify with confidence, and where credit for achievements is more diffused between individuals.

The possible lesson for countries outside the US may be that long-term success at the highest level of revolutionary biomedical science (and probably other sciences) may require a sufficiently large number of sufficiently large and individually-successful institutions in open competition with one another. If this model cannot be replicated within smaller nations, then it implies that such arrangements need to be encouraged and facilitated in multi-national units, such as the European Union.

Acknowledgement

Thanks are due to Peter Andras whose conversation and collaboration fuelled this work.

Which are the best nations and institutions for revolutionary science 1987–2006? Analysis using a combined metric of Nobel prizes, Fields medals, Lasker awards and Turing awards (NFLT metric)

Bruce G. Charlton

Medical Hypotheses. 2006; 68: 1191-1194

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Summary

I have previously suggested that Nobel prizes can be used as a scientometric measurement of ‘revolutionary science’; and that for this purpose it would be better if more Nobel prizes were awarded, especially in three new subjects of mathematics, medicine and computing science which have become major sciences over recent decades. In the following analysis of the last 20 years from 1987 to 2006, I use three prestigious prizes in mathematics (Fields medal), medicine (Lasker award for Clinical Medical Research) and computing science (A.M. Turing award) which are plausible surrogates for Nobel prizes. The combined Nobel–Fields–Lasker–Turing (NFLT) metric is strongly dominated by the USA. However the distribution implies that revolutionary science may be somewhat more broadly distributed than the pure Nobel metric suggests. The UK and France seem to be significant nations in some types of revolutionary science (although the UK has declined substantially as a centre of revolutionary science); and Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Russia, Denmark and Norway also feature. The top world institutions for revolutionary science according to NFLT are MIT, Stanford and Princeton – all in the USA – and the USA has 19 institutions with at least three prize-winners. Second is France, with three institutions having three or more winners; the UK and Norway have one each. The NFLT metric confirms previous observations that many public universities in the Western USA have now become a major focus of revolutionary science; and that Harvard has declined from its previous status as the top world centre of revolutionary science to about seventh-place. This analysis confirms the potential value of increasing the number of Nobel prizes as a means of identifying and monitoring centres of excellence in revolutionary science.

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Introduction

Revolutionary science is a term coined by Thomas Kuhn in his bookThe structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago University Press, 1970) to describe research which changes the fundamental structures of science by making new theories, discoveries or technologies (ie. new ‘paradigms’). But most research is ‘normal science’, comprising checking, trial-and-error improvement and the more gradual and incremental extrapolation of already-existing paradigms.

I have previously suggested that Nobel prizes can be used as a scientometric measurement of ‘revolutionary science’; and that for this purpose it would be better if more Nobel prizes were awarded, especially in three new subjects of mathematics, medicine and computing science which have become major sciences over recent decades [1], [2] and [3]. My three disciplinary suggestions for Nobel expansion are here simply assumed to be valid, and in the following analysis of the last 20 years from 1987–2006, I have used three prestigious prizes in mathematics (Fields Medal), medicine (Lasker Award for Clinical Medical research) and computing science (A.M. Turing award) which are plausible surrogates for Nobel prizes.

The choice of the Fields medal [4] as a near-Nobel equivalent was also made by the well-respected Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings of the world’s best universities [5]. It is a highly prestigious prize awarded every four years (in batches of up to four winners – making the prize approximately annual) by the International Mathematical Union to a mathematician aged less than 40.

The approximately annual Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research [6] recognizes from one to three scientists whose work pioneers a major improvement in clinical management or treatment. Unlike the Lasker award for Basic Medical Research, which frequently predicts a Nobel prize in Physiology/Medicine, the Clinical Medical Research (CMR) award does not frequently overlap with the Nobel prize. Only one person in the last twenty years (Barry Marshall) has received both a Lasker award for CMR and also a Nobel prize, and this particular award was removed from the Lasker statistic in the following tabulations.

The A.M. Turing Award is given annually to one or two individuals by the Association for Computing Machinery for contributions of lasting and major importance to the computer field [7].

Having identified the winners of Fields, Lasker and Turing prizes for the past twenty years; I discovered their national and institutional affiliation at the time the prize was awarded – either from the official web pages of the prize-awarding institutions, or by wider internet searching for references to these awards (e.g. Wikipedia entries, press releases, references to the prizes in other publications etc.). Each prize-winner was therefore credited to a single nation and institution. The data from Fields, Lasker and Turing winners were then pooled with the data from Nobel prize-winners and tabulated.

Since the aim of this study was to identify the strongest nations and institutions in revolutionary science, there was a minimum threshold of three Nobel–Fields–Lasker–Turing winners before a nation or institution was included in the tables.

Results

The national Nobel–Fields–Lasker–Turing (NFLT) metric (Table 1) is strongly dominated by the USA, confirming the pattern demonstrated by the previous analysis of Nobel prizes [3]. But inclusion of Fields–Lasker–Turing winners implies that revolutionary science may be more broadly distributed than the pure Nobel metric suggests. The UK and France, in particular, seem to be more significant nations in revolutionary science than suggested by Nobels alone; and other nations are identified as significant which are missed by the purely Nobel prize analysis: Russia, Denmark and Norway.

The top world revolutionary science institutions identified by the NFLT metric (Table 2) are MIT, Stanford and Princeton in the USA; and the USA has nineteen institutions with at least three prize-winners. Harvard stays in seventh place for the combined Nobel–Fields–Lasker–Turing metric, which is the same as its Nobel prize-winning rank, tending to confirm my previous observation [3] that Harvard has indeed declined as a centre of revolutionary science – although it remains dominant in ‘normal science’ as measured by metrics such as numbers of publications and citations.

In second place to the USA as a home of revolutionary science institutions is France, which has three institutions having three or more Nobel–Fields–Lasker–Turing winners. This particularly reflects French strength in mathematical research, with six Fields medallists in the past 20 years. University of Cambridge (UK) and University of Oslo (Norway) also emerge as significant.

Interpretation

In general, this analysis demonstrates the potential value of increasing the number of Nobel prizes [2], since otherwise the significant strength of France – and its three elite institutions – would be missed. The analysis also confirms the results of the pure-Nobel metric in suggesting that a high level of national performance in revolutionary science is probably a consequence of having elite institutions that win three or more prizes in a 20 year period.

Measured by the NFLT metric; outside of the USA (with its 19 institutions of revolutionary science), only France seems to have succeeded in supporting more than one centre of revolutionary science over the past 20 years. Up until the mid-1980s, the UK was a long-term clear second to the USA in Nobel prizes [3]; but from 1987 to 2006 three of its major prize-winning institutions (i.e. the University of Oxford, the Cambridge Molecular Biology MRC Unit, and Imperial College London) have declined as centres of revolutionary science, and now only the University of Cambridge achieves the three-winner NFLT threshold.

But the most significant result of this analysis is to demonstrate and confirm the massive US domination of revolutionary science [1] and [3], and the lack of any significant national competition for this status except in mathematics (France has six Fields medals to the USA’s eight). This contrasts with the general picture of European, East Asian and Chinese science ‘catching-up’ with the USA in terms of ‘normal science’ production (as measured by numbers of publications and citations [3] and [8]).

Looking into the long term, the lack of international competition in revolutionary science is somewhat worrying, since it means that world scientific progress may increasingly depend upon the US research system. In the US it is probably within-nation research competition between rival institutions that has so far maintained striving and standards in revolutionary science. But if US universities began to compete on the basis of ‘normal science’ instead of revolutionary science – as seems to have happened in the less-diverse, less competitive and more risk-averse Anglo-European research systems [9] – then we might expect to see a decline equivalent to that which has occurred over recent decades in mainland Europe and the UK [3].

The first signs of decline might be seen in previously-successful revolutionary science institutions which, like Harvard or Cambridge (UK), win progressively-fewer major research prizes [3] while maintaining a very high output of highly cited publications [1] and [10]. A more advanced state of decline might be harder to detect, since there would (presumably) continue to be Nobel-, Fields-, Lasker- and Turing-winners even in the absence of actual revolutionary science.

However, at present, the situation 1987–2006 looks healthy and competitive for revolutionary science in the USA, particularly in the elite of MIT, Stanford and Princeton and the recently-emerging Western US institutions [3] exemplified by UCSF with its three Nobels and two Lasker awards (Table 2).

Significance of the NFLT metric

The Nobel–Fields–Lasker–Turing metric only measures the tip of an iceberg of revolutionary science, and my assumption is that each successful example of revolutionary science which has led to a prize, medal or award must (on general theoretical principles [11]) have been supported by a very much larger and more complex system of revolutionary science comprising numerous people and institutions.

So, the NFLT metric will intrinsically register many ‘false negatives’ and systematically under-estimates the scale of revolutionary science. Despite this, the NFLT metric seems to have value, since these prizes apparently have a low false positive rate: impressionistically and anecdotally, the great majority of winners seem thoroughly to ‘deserve’ to win for their research, which has indeed been revolutionary in the sense of changing the direction of science.

It seems unlikely that scientists are frequently, primarily and specifically motivated to do high quality revolutionary science by the prospect of winning a Nobel prize or one of the other high medals and awards – although many would no doubt day-dream about the possibility. Indeed, there is vast variability in the personality types of scientists and their motivations. Rather, Nobels and the like can be seen as providing an after-the-fact identification of some of the clearest and best-validated examples of revolutionary science.

The NFLT metric can therefore be seen as analogous to a ‘top-down’ macroeconomic quantitative variable, such as national taxes and interest rates. Such a variable may have value for monitoring, evaluation and policy; but does not necessarily have a close relationship to individual motivations and behaviors [1]. The NFLT metric is suggestive, but its validity needs to be established by further empirical studies.